Treat Yo'self... To A Home Cooked Meal In!

Saturday, January 6, 2018

Treat Yo'self... its the
motto of my 2018 and home cookin' is the staple of every date night, every
family night out and every grand occasion from here on out… Enjoying your time
together over a
delicious meal is taken for granted as
most families find themselves relying on takeout, fast food and restaurants.
However, when the New Year rolls around it’s traditionally a time for belt
tightening in both the literal and metaphorical senses. Gym resolution-ers
please stand up!It’s time to ditch the
unhealthy (and likely heavily processed) fast foods and get back to cooking delicious homemade
meals either on your own or with others.

If that last sentence
provoked an eye roll (don’t think I didn’t see it), don’t worry. Healthy, home
cooked food need neither be dull, bland or uninspiring. Hello?! If you have
ever even opened the Pinteest app, nothing is uninspiring anymore. With the right
recipes and a fresh perspective, you’ll find a home cooked meal every bit as
satisfying as the kind you’d pay top dollar for in your favorite restaurants
and with a whole lot less of the guilt... seriously, a whole lot less.

Homemade is fun!

Many of us tend to assume
that cooking for ourselves or others is needlessly time consuming and
laborious, involves tedious searching for hard to find ingredients and leaves a
looming stack of dirty dishes. And all for an experience that’s a little too
underwhelming in the taste department. Although most are not wrong about that,
this could be the reason why Americans are so worryingly
reliant on eating out.

Honestly, nothing could be
further from the truth! Cooking and eating at home are a great way to spend
quality time together as a family while contributing towards your health,
weight loss or money saving goals for the new year. Thats the logical reason
but have you evr cooked without pants on? It's liberating. That' the real
winner there.

Make the time

The 21st century is a
demanding time for most of us. Many of us are working longer hours than ever and under tougher conditions. It’s little
surprise that many of us come home stressed, exhausted and hardly in a mood to
do anything at all. Understandable, but don't let it impede on your health and
happiness!it should not be allowed to
impede your health and happiness. So what can you do to make cooking at home
easier and less time consuming so that you can have the time to relax in
comfort.

Prepare, cook and freeze in
batches. (AKA, meal prep)

Make a meal plan for the week (and
stick to it) (AKA, meal prep)

Buy prepared foods (such as ready
chopped onions and garlic), you’d be amazed how much time it saves you.
(AKA pre meal prep)

Invest in consumer electronics
that will help you. A slow cooker, for example, makes a pot roast or a casserole so easy
that it’s like someone else has cooked for you. You plug it in, go to
work, and then feast upon home arrival.

Allows you to wing it

Cooking
and dining together can be
every bit as much of a treat as taking the family to their favorite restaurant.
Not only is cooking together a fun bonding exercise but it allows you to get
creative. Everyone can each take a part and figure out their portion of the
recipe. If it doesn't work out quite like the recipe get creative and make
something up. "What doesn't kill you, will only make you stronger."-
Kanye. Next thing you know you're a pro on Master Chef because your sprinkled
lemon pepper on the caramelized onions. Cooking together arms all involved with
a vocabulary of ingredients, cooking techniques and recipes that can be used
over and over again.

It’s up to you to make
cooking fun and as much of an event as stepping out for dinner or perusing the
take out menu. Choose recipes with your guests. Pro Tip: Giving others
ownership of the occasion will make it fun rather than being treated as another
chore to be overcome.

Better for your health

Home
cooking is undoubtedly the healthier way to go. The trouble with eating out is that you just
don’t know what’s going into the food you eat. Healthy food begins with the
right ingredients and many restaurants are less than forthcoming about what
goes into their food. Even outlets like McDonalds, whose marketing tries to
offer a degree of reassurance about the quality of their ingredients, contains
some scary
ingredients that will make you think
twice before sticking your fingers into a box of McNuggets.

Since most of us start the new year on a health kick, cooking at home gives you
unmatched control over not only your calorie intake but your micro and macro
nutrients, too. I'm not going to pretend I know ht those are specifically but
whether you’re looking to cut back on carbs, forbid fats, say no to sugar, or embrace
veganuary you’ll find it a whole lot
easier when you’re cooking for yourself.

For best results you should
cook everything from scratch. It may be tempting to do 80% of the cooking
yourself but then rely on ready-made sauces that may contain unexpectedly high
levels of salt, sugar and saturated fats. There’s nothing that you can buy in a
packet or bottle that you can’t make yourself with a minimum of effort. FromDIY taco seasonings to easy homemade salad
dressings, it’s healthier and cheaper to do it yourself. Plus, since you’ll be using far
less packaging, it’s better for the
environment, too!

Better for your wallet

Eating is a big part of
life and we should eat little and often to keep ourselves healthy and keep
unhealthy cravings at bay. This is especially hard if you're one of those
"live to eat" folks. *cough cough* me.This doesn’t mean we should spend a fortune.
Take buying your lunch for example. A cheap lunch out might cost $10. Over the
space of a working year that comes out at around $2,500 a year. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics reports that the average US household spends $3,008 a year on
dining out. I dunno about you, but I am in no situation where I can just throw
away $3,000 because I didn't meal prep my lunch.

So many recipes!

There are so many recipes
out there to tempt your tastebuds that it’s virtually unnecessary to resort to
eating out for a delicious meal. If, however, you really get a hankering for a
big mac or some KFC there are web sites specifically devoted to helping you
recreate healthier
approximations of your junk food faves at home at a fraction of the cost. "Alexa, make me a big
mac!" "I'm sorry I'm a speaker but I can give you a healthy
alternative recipe..." Sassy.

Daily Cup of JOJO is a part of some affiliate programs, meaning if you click and/or make a purchase from this site I may make a commission from it which I will use to buy unnecessary wall art, my Netflix subscription, and add to my scotch collection I haven’t started yet.

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About Me

I’m Jordan, a simple girl running a simple blog who certainly doesn’t have it all together but will laugh at everything until she does. My little corner of the internet is where food, fads, flying and frivolous findings all come together. I have new posts every Tuesday and Thursday, and sometimes in between. Come hang out